SF Cyclotouring

8/29/2006

Last night I finally finished up some bike-tweaking that I've beentrying to get to for quite a while...

When I built the Fuji CX up I used some scrounged wheels I had in theshop, consisting of some old Wolber rims, early 105 freewheel hubs,and a 7-spd Sachs FW I've been hording in my parts drawer for at least10 years. I manged to coax the 9-spd barcon to index on the 7-spd FWusing an extreme version of the "alternate cable routing" trickdescribed at sheldonbrown.com. At any rate, the rear wheel wasproblematic at first, and gave me some dishing/truing problems, makingme think that the rim itself is warped. It's actually held up muchbetter than I expected, but the FW hub makes me nervous (even thoughI'm lightweight, I've bent FW-hub axels before on both road bikes andMTBs) and I really want 8 or 9 speed compatability to better indexwith the 9-spd barcon shifter.

So, I kept looking for a good used cheap wheelset on the localCraigslist, and I found one a few weeks ago -- a guy who lived 1 blockfrom me was selling a set of Mavic CXP-21s laced to current-gen/9-spd105 hubs...and he sold 'em to me for $65, which I thought was a darngood deal. I'm not too sure about the CXP-21 rims...they don't haveeyelets, and I'm a big fan of those (an aside: the CXP-22s DO haveeyelets). They're also about 1mm narrower than the tried-n-true OpenPro or MA-2 rims, making me wonder about their capability for wider CXtires. Finally, the oddest thing about them is that, presumably dueto their semi-aero profile, the sidewall braking surface is only about7.3mm tall, compared to the 10-12mm found on Open Pros and other rims. V-brake pads are actually TALLER than the rim sidewall, making padadjustment a more precise task.

Some poking around on the web made me realize that lots of CX bikescome with these rims as OEM (e.g., Cannondale) so I figured thatthey'd work well enough. I've spent random evenings over the past fewweeks adjusting the hubs (the grease is still fresh-n-clean!) andtruing the wheels, trying to achieve balanced spoke tension. Iinitially thought these wheels were reasonably true, but after gettingthem home and in the wheelstand I saw differently. Nothing horrible,but certainly worse than I'd ride. The front rim also had a minorsidewall ding that I didn't catch when I was buying them, either --looks like somebody hit a curb or a big pothole or something with anunderinflated tire.

Finally, I spend some more time truing the wheels last night, andfinally got them "good enough". I'm reasonably happy with thespoke-tension-balance in both wheels, but the front could be a littlestraighter. I got some tires mounted (700x35mm foldable SpecializedTriCross -- thought I'd try 'em since they're "Yet Another Set of CXTires Kicking Around the Shop") and I also installed thefilth-n-grunge-caked-on XTR 12-32 8spd cassette I picked up for $5 atlast year's Veloswap (I thought it was 9spd when I bought it, DOH).It cleaned up nicely with lots of elbow grease, an old toothbrush, andsome degreaser. It actually doesn't look too worn and I think it'llwork, which is great because it's LIGHT.

I mounted the wheels, adjusted the v-brakes to suit, and thenre-routed the rear derailleur cable to use the "standard" alternatecable routing which is supposed to make 9-spd shifters index on an8-spd cogset. I'm happy to report that works great (at least in theworkstand). Although I don't have a scale to weigh it, the bike feelsquite a bit lighter now, due to the freehub, XTR cassette, and lightertires. Looking foward to a quick test ride tonight after work!

On a tangential note, there's a Fuji CX just like mine up on Ebayright now: http://tinyurl.com/qvjvx I'm curious to see what it sellsfor...